Brian Henry Bestseller Workshop

My lovely purple workshop notes

On Saturday I went to Brian Henry's How to Write a Bestseller workshop in Gravenhurst. I really enjoyed it. It was good to think at an objective or macro level about what makes a compelling story, a sympathetic hero, a realistic villain, and so on.

Of course, part of the workshop involved an exercise in writing. I must be the only writer I know who dislikes doing writing exercises at workshops. I'm not sure what's with me on that. Anyway, I have to say, once I got going I really did start to enjoy it. Maybe I'm just a little bit rusty because it's been awhile since I wrote longer narrative fiction (been writing short poetic prose lately).

It was truly fascinating to hear what some of the other writers had written for that exercise. As for my exercise, it sort of dovetailed with an idea I've been mulling over for a middle grade novel. My piece hinged on the content of a text message the hero was trying to conceal. I quite like that idea, but here's my problem: I have actually no clue what the content of that text message is. And I think it's kind of important.

So hopefully my brain mulls that one over for awhile. The workshop was a good kicker for me to begin thinking in a longer format than I've written up to this point. It's getting me to think about what I'm going to write for, oh, July's (whisper) Muskoka Novel Marathon in which I have to work on writing a novel for a whole entire weekend--eep! Nothing like a writer setting herself up for a huge and intimidating challenge...but it's also all in the name of raising money for literacy, and that's always a good cause.